The Cheetah
by ThinkFast
Summary: Short, Topher-centered fic set between Epitaphs. Major spoilers for One, and very minor ones for Two. Rated T for some violence and language. And just so no one's disapointed, no, it has nothing to do with an actual cheetah.


**Author's Note: This story is set between Epitaphs, and in it, Topher briefly regains his sanity before being captured by Rossom. Told (mostly) in first-person perspective from the point of view of my original character.**

* * *

><p>Right now, I'm running out of options. It kind of sucks. I'm stuck on this dead-end street, hiding behind a stack of broken down crates and hoping against hope that no one can see me. Before me sits a barren city street. It's pretty much like any street here in Tucson. If it weren't for the mindless killing machines patrolling the sidewalks, I wouldn't even know anything had ever changed here. But I can't really ignore the Zombies. Especially not right now, since my plan is all about escaping them.<p>

But there are way too many. I'm pretty bad at telling the size of a crowd, but I think there are at least twenty Zombies out there. Hopelessly, I lean down to check my gun. Yeah, I have around... six bullets. I am so boned.

Which brings me to Plan B: run. As suddenly as the thought enters my head I'm off, soaring over the cracked pavement like, I don't know, a cheetah, or something. Something majestic and fast. Of course, my self-praise is instantly cut short by the sound of footsteps behind me. I crane my neck back and see that I'm being chased by four Zombies. I guess it could be a lot worse, but you'd think they'd have enough to eat without running after me all the time. I know this city. It had plenty of brainless people, even before 'The Call'.

I'm being chased by blood-thirsty monsters, yet for the first time all day, I'm not worried. I can hear their pounding footsteps behind me, but it's _way_ behind me. Even though I got stuck with stupid fast zombies, I can still run well enough to out distance them.

Sure enough, I start to hear the sound of footsteps fading behind me. The adrenaline ebbs from my veins, and I slow down to an easy jog. I have to be on the lookout now, or else I'll run into small fires and dismembered corpses. Not that dead bodies even phase me now. Honestly, that thought scares me almost as much as the Zombies do.

I sigh and come to a stop before I have the chance to exhaust myself. I really don't want to get used to things like that. I never want to be someone who casually struts by the bodies of her fallen friends. Not that I have any friends at the moment, but I'm hoping that will change soon. It'll have to change soon, or else there won't be any more me left to hope.

I sit down and try to balance my weight on the edge of an overturned trashcan. My mind goes through possible plans, all of which start with _run_ and end with _keep running_. Getting the hell out of this city would certainly be a start, but with the Zombies lurking at every corner, I'm not sure that I'd stand a very good chance.

I'm hopelessly lost and wishing for some direction when the Universe finally caves and gives me a little help. It comes in the form of gunfire. Gunfire! That means survivors, food, shelter, protection, a fighting chance. Other real people who would be willing to help me. I leap to my feet, feeling like I could practically dance with joy. Survivors! I'm saved! I take off at break-neck, majestic-cheetah speeds towards the noise.

My mind is filled with the first truly happy thoughts I've had in years. If I can just get to these people, I might actually live through this disaster. I'm fully aware that any hopes I had about surviving on my own were just childish dreams, but this! This is something real. These people _will_ accept me, I know it. They have to. First off, survivors are pretty rare these days. If you meet another real person, you team up with them. It's just that simple. Secondly, I have a sympathetic face. I'm sixteen, but most people I meet could swear that I'm around thirteen, and my face has that 'innocent' quality. I used to hate it more than anything, but now I realize that anything that helps people trust you is a good thing. People are less likely to send a sweet little girl out to her death than they are to send a weak teenager. Not that can't pull my own weight. Okay, literally, probably not, but I can slip through tight spaces to reach things, and I can run like the wind. As demonstrated.

Now that I'm getting closer, I can hear the sound of murmuring voices over the gunshots and the sound of sprinting Zombies. This is it. This is my chance, my one break. And finally, I can see them. My saviors.

There are more of them than I expected. More than ten, at least. They're hugely tall and strong, with gigantic guns. My tiny handgun seems even more inadequate in comparison, but that doesn't even matter right now. These guys are here, and no matter how imposing they look, they are my last shot.

"Hey!" I shout. None of them even turn towards me. "Hey! Over here! I'm not an Empty, I'm not a Zombie! I'm real! I can help you! I'm real!" My breath comes in gasps as I try to keep my fast pace and yell at the same time.

A few of the men turn towards me. Their eyes are cold. Really cold. I half-stumble over an old coffee tin, my bravado suddenly gone. These guys are not who I'd imagined meeting. My brain is just starting to process the 'Oh crap' of it all. Fortunately, I don't have much time to think about it. It appears that someone has stuck a needle in my neck, and the world is fading fast. I spin around in a daze to see another one of those cold men behind me. Before I can decide what any of this means, my world starts to twirl like a ballerina, and before I know it my cheek scrapes asphalt. Everything fades to black. Curtain.

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><p>"Whoa..." My head is killing me. Possibly literally. "Am I an Empty?" I ask, to no one in particular. Someone in particular answers me, though.<p>

"If you can still ask that, then no," Says Mr. Disembodied Voice.

"Whoa!" I leap up and glance around frantically. Details run through me like I'm an ADD six year old. The room I'm in is small and bolted from the outside. It has no windows. There's a trickle of blood flowing down my temple. I'm handcuffed, freaking handcuffed! There's got to be... I don't know, some sort of law against that, right?

Oh, and there's a guy. Some blonde guy, staring at me. He's kind of cute, in a geeky way, but way too skinny. Not that I'm not, of course.

"So... not an Empty then?" I ask stupidly, since I don't know what else to say. I need some time to process things, I guess.

"Empty, Doll, Sleepy, Dumbshow... Eyhh, I don't think you're one. Unless you're, you know, printed."

"Yeah," I swallow hard. Printed. Body-swapped. That was a bad thought. But no, I can see that I'm still me. Same dull clothes, same frail body. My brain is still in my brain, or so my brain tells me. Hopefully I can trust it.

My eyes pan up in time to catch the blonde shrug. "Well you're a prisoner either way, friend, and if the Empire hates you, that's good enough for me." He squints. "Unless... you're a double agent, or a-a sleeper..." He trails off.

Okay, weird. I glance around the room, trying to out think that awkward silence. My eyes narrow as I try to make out a faded logo on the wall. "Ross. Rossun? Um. Rossum. Isn't that the company that was all over the news a while back?" Back when we still had news. It couldn't have been less than two years ago, although I'm not really up on what day it is right at the moment.

"Yeah, that's Rossum. The, ahh, Boogey Men who made mind slaves out of nice girls like you."

"Lynn." I correct, studying the ceiling for some weakness. Or maybe I'm just trying not to stop and think of what's going to happen to me, about who has captured me. Mission: failure. On both counts.

"Topher."

"Nope, pretty sure I'm Lynn."

He laughs politely at my lame joke, which leads me to believe that he can't be all that bad. I smirk at him. "Well, I guess I'm kidnapped, then. Great."

"Yeah, it's a blast. Great food, five star accommodations, nice view of the beach..."

I pull myself to my feet so that I can pace a bit. I don't know whether to ask this guy, Topher, about how he got here or not. "Been here long?" I settle for.

He shakes his head. "Nah. A couple days." He seems to sense my unspoken question. "I was with a group of other survivors, old... friends of mine. Rossum raided our building. None of us saw it coming. I haven't seen any of the others here, so I just hope they made it out okay."

I nod. "Rossum again? So those are the guys destroyed the world, right?" Again, the news images flash through my head. A chair. An evil spa. And then some intercut clips of blood and death.

"They didn't destroy the world." He says quietly.

What? "What?"

My single thought is cut off by the sound of bolts sliding outside the door. It swings open and a man steps in. Clean cut, with gray hair and a nice suit, but seriously creepy looking eyes. He's dressed to kill. Again, probably literally.

"Clyde?" Topher asks with a equal mix of anger and hesitance. So these two know each other? Well it doesn't sound like they were best buds, so it's no help to my crappy situation.

"Ahh yes, Topher Brink. I trust you find our accommodations favorable? You _are _our star guest." He smirks in that evil way movie villains always smirk. I wonder if he practiced that in front of a mirror or something. Or maybe it's just hard-wired into your brain if you're a bad guy.

"Are you serious? I've been locked in this room for days! You freaking kidnapped me!" Topher shouts at the clean-cut man, at Clyde.

Clyde laughs, but there's no humor at all in his voice. Again, I wonder if it's practiced. "A necessity you would surely understand if you still played for the winning team. You had so much promise, Topher." Holy crap. Is this guy an evil mentor figure of something? What's going on here? I switch my eyes between Topher and Clyde, back and forth, back and forth. Topher ignores me, and Clyde continues. "I simply can't understand what lead the Los Angeles House astray. You were all so sensible, top of your field. And then that rouge influence, Echo... Which reminds me of our other guest." He gives me a creepy cold smile. I don't even care if he does practice, that is still a messed up look.

Topher starts to attempt calming hand movements. "Whoa, can we just leave the kid out of this?" See? Sympathetic face. "You know that Rossum doesn't care about her."

"Oh, Rossum doesn't. There aren't many things left in the world that Rossum cares about. The thing here is that _you _care about her. Just like all those other broken girls you cared about. Whisky, Sierra... Bennett." I... do not know who those people are. I decide to keep my mouth shut.

Topher slams the ground and flies to his feet. "You don't get to talk about Bennett." I never thought that such an easy-going guy could have so much murder in his eyes. He looks about ready to take out Clyde right here and now.

Clyde seems to notice that. He casually gestures to the door behind him, and two gigantic men emerge from it. They look even bigger than the ones who knocked me out, if that's even possible.

Now I'm pretty new to the whole calculating odds-in-a-fight-thing, but I defiantly wasn't liking the chances of a Geek Squad and an underweight teenager against two huge guys with guns.

"Struck a nerve, have I? But fine, we don't have to talk about your little girlfriend. She's irrelevant. What a shame, too. Both of you really." Clyde's eyes snap back to attention as he remembers something, which doesn't exactly make me thrilled. "Regardless, we needn't talk about the girl if it bothers you. Besides, I'm much more interested in how she died." Crap. Dead girlfriends. This is _so_ not going my way.

One of the bodyguards steps forward on some unseen cue and clamps a strong arm around my chest. In some cases, this might have been a reassuring action. This is not one of those cases.

"You know how she died," Topher snarls. Again, he has that same crazed anger. "You! You and Boyd. The people I trusted... You killed her."

"Bullet to the brain, correct? And the blood flew all over your face." Clyde continues his speech as if Topher had never interrupted. As he lets out a sadistic laugh, my mind races to piece together this disjointed back story while also searching for a way to escape these crazy people. I'm really regretting my decision to head towards those gunmen. I should have run when I had the chance.

The man continues his story as casually as if it were about fishing instead of murdering. He seems fairly unaware, or at least unphased, but the fury burning in Topher's eyes. "Why, if my sources are right, you wore that blood for the next two days before it finally rubbed off!"

"You shut the hell up about Bennett!"

Clyde's smirk doesn't even fade. Having enormous bodyguards probably doesn't hurt one's composure. "I just wanted to refresh your memory, Topher. Because you see, that thing that happened to Bennett-"

I feel a cold, circular piece of steel dig into the back of head, and I don't have to look to know what it is. Oh. Crap.

"-It's going to happen to this girl, too." Clyde beams coldly at the look of shock on Topher's face. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to ignore my imminent death. "Unless, of course, you can invent a new technology to wipe the planet. Which we all know you can."

"You, You're asking me to wipe the entire world... To kill the entire world?" Can he do that?

"People will die if you do or you don't," Clyde snaps. "That's a new problem, and you're welcome to it. But the thing we're bargaining for right now is the girl's life. You can save it, or you can get a rehash of how blood splatter feels against your cheekbones. If you choose to help us, we'll see the poor duckling released and set on her merry way, and you'll get finer accommodations that money can buy, plus all the tech you can play with. If you turn us down, the girl will die. But she'll just be one in a long string of deaths until you finally give in. One bullet a day. One person down, every day, until you solve our little problem."

"Don't want to waste..." I mumble hysterically. What? What am I even saying? Am I going crazy? How can I die? I-I'm just a kid! I'm not suppose to die!

Clyde looks at me disdainfully. "Why yes. So, what'll it be, Topher?" He asks, turning back towards the man who now holds my fate, along with the world's, in his hands. I look over the man standing before me. Could he really wipe the entire planet? It seems impossible. But Clyde seems pretty confident. A lump catches in my throat. I'm not sure which of Clyde's options scare me worse.

"How can you expect me... I at least need some time to think things over, you know, weigh all the... options." Topher tires to sound upbeat and fails miserably. Things are _not_ going well. I am so boned.

"No, no more stalling. You will choose, now, or the girl is just going to die."

The gun pointed at my head clicks, and I whimper. Topher looks at me, his eyes full of pain. I know what I should say. I should be the good little victim of the week, the mauve shirt. I should tell him to let them kill me. But I'm no hero. "I don't want to die."

"I so sorry," Topher breathes. "I just can't do this."

I want to say something comforting. 'It's not your fault.' 'Rossum will pay for this.' 'Don't give in to their evil scheme, Topher! Remember those three minutes we shared!' I want to play on the movie cliché, because if this were a movie, I wouldn't die. Someone would swoop in and save me at the last instant, and we would be free, and the world would go back to the way it was. But all I can say is something they never say in the movies, since they're too busy being noble and having honor. "I don't want to die."

"The girl makes a fine point, Topher," Clyde snaps, getting irritated now. "So, are you going to rip her future away from her or not? Choose now."

Topher hangs his head. "I can't do this for you. Lynn, I'm so sorry, but you'd be gone either way." Yeah that's a huge fucking comfort! Tears sting my eyes. I want to scream at him for not helping me, for just letting me die. What kind of hero is he? How can he let them do this?

"Very well." Clyde says curtly. He nods, and I hear the gun shift into position. My eyes squeeze shut as I try to hold back my tears. I'm a dead woman. I wish I could fool myself into thinking that I wasn't, that this was all some dream. I wish I could find some great enlightenment. I wish I could say some witty, tear jerking last words that would give Topher the courage to keep living and burn Clyde to ashes, but I can't. All I can do is go back, think about this morning. Wish that it had never happened. My thoughts start to spin around my head at majestic cheetah speeds, circling my brain. Somewhere, far in the distance, I hear a click.

Boom.

* * *

><p>Clyde Ambrose steps over the dead girl on the floor to get a closer look at Topher's shocked face. It's spattered brightly with the girl's blood, something which thrills the steel-hearted man. The programmer looks shell-shocked, positively horrified. <em>What an overreaction<em>, thinks Ambrose. _It's not like he's never seen this before_.

"We'll be back tomorrow," He announces in a bright voice. "With another lost soul whose fate you'll get to decide. You always did love playing God, Topher. I don't see why this phases you so much."

Clyde inches closer to Topher, who still says nothing. "As you can see, we're not playing. You _will_ invent this technology, eventually. If you do it now, you may actually save a few lives." When Topher still doesn't respond, the other man shrugs. "We'll get the body out of the way for you, and you'll get some time to think things over." He flicks his fingers and a bodyguard steps forward to remove the girl.

All Topher notices is that she is so light, the guard doesn't even have to drag her out. He just flips her over his shoulder, like a broken ragdoll. A broken doll.

He finally speaks now, in a quiet voice. "Do you really expect me to invent what you want?" He asks, as Ambrose strides towards the door.

Clyde corrects him in an overly polite manner. "What we _need_."

And the door swings shut.


End file.
